Candles for the New World, by Carl Petterson
[Editor’s Note: In February 2021, Carl’s essay won a writing contest sponsored by Leading Age.]
Even before the 1840s, as pioneers began settling the Oregon Territory, there were stories of a Spanish shipwreck on the rugged coast. The stories may have originated in 1813 with the fur traders at Fort Astoria. At that time blocks of beeswax could still be dug up on the Nehalem Spit near Neahkahnie Mountain and brought to the fort to barter. The practical traders made the beeswax into candles. The natives had no memory of this shipwreck to add.
As the State of Oregon was settled the buried treasure stories at Neahkahnie Mountain became more elaborate. Adventurers chased local fantasies of buried Spanish gold. It was always Spanish gold not ordinary things. These stories weren’t true, of course, but, generations later, archaeology and Spanish archival data have discovered an entirely different story.
As the Spanish brought Europeans to build their Empire in the New World they also brought their culture with them. This required household goods and foods unavailable in Mexico. When these things were cheaper to buy from Asia than Europe the Spanish shipped them from their Philippines assembly port in Manilla in sailing ships we know as galleons.
In sailing west across the sea the galleons inaccurately sailed where the winds took them. They made landfall somewhere along the coast of North America then tacked south to the port of Acapulco. The Spanish galleon in our story, the Santo Christo de Burgos, was one of these. The Spanish Archives say she left in late summer of 1693 for a routine voyage, but she never arrived. Along with a supercargo of Spanish officials, priests, and diplomats and their families, she had a cargo of teak lumber, beeswax, and fine Chinese porcelain dishes. Beeswax seems to be an odd cargo now but, with no domestic bees in Mexico, there was no wax for candles in the New World churches. The Philippines had both bees and beeswax.
Foul winds and bad weather carried the Santo Christo de Burgos far north into the Pacific Northwest. They lost their way because overcast skies prevented them from making accurate navigational sightings. The galleon was thrown onto Oregon’s Nehalem Spit during a storm. The passengers and crew were thousands of miles from help. Those who survived the wreck waded ashore and met the fierce Tillamook Indians, generations before European contact. The Tillamook would have treated the survivors as unwelcome intruders and enslaved those they didn’t kill at once. Maybe this is the origin of local natives with blue eyes.
Scientists believe the 1693 shipwreck survived until huge tsunami waves from the December 1700 Earthquake broke it up and scattered the pieces along the shore. Shards of Chinese porcelain are found at the mouth of the Nehalem River where they were washed in by the tsunami. Pieces of teak also have been found. One doubts the natives could use the beeswax and left it the wreck. We know some of this tragedy but we will never know all of it. We definitely know the beeswax never reached its destination to be made into candles.